Being a world champion athlete is super demanding and tennis champ Serena Williams has already made many sacrifices to maintain her career. But no matter how much time the tennis court requires, motherhood is Serena Williams’ priority.
Between her tennis career and her new clothing line, Williams has a lot on her plate, but the number one priority in her life is 19-month-old daughter Alexis Olympia. The super star mom admits, however, that balancing it all is getting more challenging as her daughter inches closer to two years old.
“I’m a super hands-on mom. I am with her every day since she was born. We haven’t spent a day apart,” Williams revealed in an interview with PEOPLE. “Despite my best efforts to be like, ‘Oh, I’ll take her with me’ … It’s been really trying. This is a whole new territory for me.”
She continued, “It’s definitely not easy, and I’m juggling more than I’m used to,” Williams adds of her busy schedule. “I think the most crazy part is now I’m adding ‘mom’ to that, and that has been really hard.”
Williams says her own mom has warned her that things are about to get even more difficult as Alexis hits those dreaded “terrible twos,” but the tennis champ has her own take on the challenging year ahead. “They’re just kids who can’t really communicate and they don’t know how to—they’re so close and they want you to understand what they’re saying,” she says. “And you don’t get what they’re saying, and then they fall on the ground and they don’t know what else to do.”
She continues, “I feel sorry for them because I’m like, ‘I’m trying to understand what you’re saying’ and they literally learn our whole language—they learn everything from scratch—and we don’t learn their language, they learn ours. It’s a pretty amazing thing to me. I’m learning a lot.”
—Shahrzad Warkentin
Featured photo: Serena Williams via Instagram
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